Adrienne García-Specht, who’s running for Cuesta College’s trustee area 4, remembers when the seeds were sown for her ambition.
In 2020, months after the United States reeled from the height of the pandemic and catalyzed racial tensions, the area 4 incumbent and then-board President Pete Sysak dodged numerous calls for his resignation after he shared posts on his personal Facebook page that contained openly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and Islamophobic statements.
“I did in a public comment say that if he didn’t resign we would find somebody to run against him, and if it had to be me, then it would be me,” García-Specht said.
She was among a throng of students, faculty, and board trustees who called for Sysak to step down at a special meeting on Nov. 12, 2020. The following day, the college’s academic senate approved a resolution calling for his censure and resignation. Sysak refused to resign but was removed from the presidency.
Sysak, a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff, is now running for a third term to retain his seat and represent the higher educational interests of Arroyo Grande, Oceano, and Nipomo. He has served on the board of trustees since 2014, and he worked at Cuesta for 17 years, organized the campus police department, and was the first college police chief.
Most of his board colleagues didn’t respond to New Times‘ requests for comment. Area 2 Trustee Debra Stakes said that while she wasn’t comfortable commenting publicly on the area 4 race, the board must act in a civil and respectful manner regardless of who wins that seat.
García-Specht hopes the tides will turn in November when residents cast their ballots.
“The values he demonstrated in sharing those posts were so antithetical to my personal values and what I think a representative of a California community college should be,” she said.
Sysak, on the other hand, told New Times that he isn’t aware of what García-Specht stands for.
“I really don’t know what her platform is. I really don’t know why she’s running for the board,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything or seen any written plan for what she’s doing.”
García-Specht’s platform is available on her website in both English and Spanish. Sysak said that while he ran a campaign website in past elections, he currently isn’t because it got expensive to maintain. He added that he doesn’t think his past controversy will hinder his campaign.
“The chancellor’s office in Sacramento requested that all community college campuses pass the resolution supporting the DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility], and the board of trustees passed a resolution supporting that,” Sysak said. “So, I don’t see any issues.”
Though García-Specht and Sysak don’t agree politically, they expressed mutual concern about one thing—area 4, which encompasses the South County portion of the college landscape, is overlooked.
“South County, especially Oceano and Nipomo, are really underrepresented at the county level,” García-Specht said. “The trustee area 4 position is one of the few ways to advocate for them on the Cuesta board. There are also heavily Latino communities, and it’s even more important to be thinking about what kinds of classes they want to see, what kinds of resources are they looking for to make Cuesta an option for them.”
Currently, Cuesta College offers campuses in the city of SLO, Paso Robles, and Arroyo Grande. While the first two are relatively well developed, both García-Specht and Sysak said that the Arroyo Grande campus—essentially, a few rooms in the Arroyo Grande High School—is stunted. They want to see more classes there, especially because students living in area 4 have a longer commute to SLO and North County, and it impacts the rate of enrollment.
“That’s probably the biggest problem that the college district has. Enrollment is down 16 percent since we had COVID,” Sysak said. “One of the ways we can increase enrollment is by bringing more classes to South County.”
He added that he conducted an informal student survey more than a decade ago. That study found that 2,000 students living in South County were opting for classes in Santa Maria at Allan Hancock College because there weren’t enough Cuesta College classes in the area.
“I thought that was a travesty because not only are we not serving the students that live in our district, but the tax money the taxpayers pay was going to Santa Maria,” he said. “On the positive side, we have the college Promise Program, which guarantees any student who graduates from a local high school in San Luis County or our district free tuition for up to two years.”
García-Specht, a full-time financial aid counselor at Cal Poly, stressed the importance of asking Cuesta students what their greatest needs are and expanding financial opportunities for the Hispanic-serving institution. Emergency aid through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF) granted students benefits like gas cards, but some minority students still faced roadblocks when it came to accessing that money. García-Specht said that students are relying on Cuesta to address dwindling funding.
“How do we continue doing that now that HEERF funding is almost out?” she said. “I don’t know what the status is about Cuesta’s HEERF funding, but most schools are burning through that now. But that doesn’t mean the need is going away.”
García-Specht plans to advocate for more robust mental health services for Cuesta students, while Sysak is a proponent of creating more vocational classes like the new aviation maintenance technician program.
Campaign disclosure statements from Jan. 1 to Sept. 24 show that García-Specht raked in contributions totaling $7,500. Those funds include $3,000 from the Cuesta College Federation of Teachers Committee on Political Education, and $300 from chartered club Democrats of SLO. The latter’s parent organization, the SLO County Democratic Party, endorsed García-Specht.
Sysak didn’t have campaign finance information available.
“I’m raising less than $2,000 and it’s mostly my own money, so there’s no requirement to file,” he said.
Trustee area 3’s seat is also up for election this cycle, and longtime Trustee Patrick Mullen is running unopposed. Darius Jones, the student trustee and president of the Associated Students of Cuesta College (ASCC), told New Times that the ASCC will host a candidate forum for the area 4 candidates before the Nov. 8 election. For more information, visit @cuestastudentlife on Instagram.
“Voting is crucial to civic participation as it helps everyone contribute to our democracy,” Jones said. “This year, the [ASCC] have made it their mission to inform our students on how voting is a powerful way for them to make their impact.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 13-23, 2022.
When I see a publication charge someone with “openly racist, misogynistic, homophobic and Islamaphobic” statements, I alway like to see what they actually said, since many on the left seem to fling those accusation pretty recklessly against anyone who they see as not being “on their side”. I think that the actual statements endorsed by Sysak are actually a lot closer to the general public’s sentiments than the hysterical yammering of many on the left which this writer seems to think reflect the only Approved Thinking.
For example, Sysak endorsed the phrase “all lives matter”. The left’s outrage would be more convincing if liberal icon Bernie Sanders didn’t use the same phrase during the 2016 campaign until he was bullied into conforming to the newly minted party line. I think that if you check with the average citizen, you will find that they agree that “all lives matter”, and that no one life matters more than others.
Or, when Sysak’s posting referred to the 2020 rioters as “thugs”, which the left deemed “racist”. Despite the left’s insistence that the disturbances were “mostly peaceful”, SOMEBODY was burning and looting the stores in the victimized cities, and killing people. Most people know the difference between a “rioter” and a “demonstrator”, and feel free to use the term “rioter” or “thug” on those who engage in violence. Few of use are inclined to engage in the Orwellian semantics of calling a looter or arsonist a “demonstrator” just because it makes the riots look friendlier.
Voters shouldn’t blindly accept the characterizations given by partisans.
John, I appreciate your being thoughtful about what you read. I watched Sysak tell a fairly conservative female trustee that he couldn’t understand what she was saying because she was too emotional and hysterical. I don’t think anyone else had a problem understanding her words as she was speaking clearly. Her comments were critical of Sysak and rather than take that in he decided to label her as hysterical to diminish her concerns. Is that a good model for all of the female students at staff at the college?
One of his posts compared every trans person as mentally ill pretenders, and decried having Mexicans voting in our elections. Cuesta is the college where many Mexicans and trans people come and hope to find safety and to improve themselves. Would you feel safe if you thought that Sysak felt all guys named John were mentally ill or shouldn’t vote?
Another post was a quote saying that we are churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skill or ambition. How do you think a recent Cuesta grad or current student would react to that? Conservative or liberal, that’s a rather poor outlook for the trustee of a college to make public. I work at Cuesta, and I see students every day that have skills, ambition, and the ability to overcome challenges that would amaze pretty much anyone.
I was reacting to the Facebook messages reported when the issue arose, and the unfair characterizations offered by some students and reported in this paper. The various “isms” tend to get flung around pretty recklessly by some on the left. Unfortunately, such overuse has diminished the power of the charge of “racism” to mere background noise. The characterization of the sentiments charged against Sysak are an example.
That said, I never saw Sysak in a meeting, so I can’t speak to that. I do note that exchanges can get pretty heated, and people are often not at their best. That may possibly apply to both parties involved.
Up until very recently, gender dysphoria WAS characterized as a mental disorder, so I think Sysak can be forgiven for not readily adopting what appears to be a recent politically-driven revision . With the incidence of suicide attributed to transgendered individuals, it is hard to say that they are well-adjusted. They deserve sympathy, not indulgence or use as a cudgel in the culture wars. It is sort of Orwellian to adjust accepted medical diagnoses to conform to politics.
If Sysak was criticizing voting by people of Mexican heritage, then he would certainly deserve a lot of criticism, but if he was criticizing voting by Mexican citizens in our elections, his concerns would be valid. We do not allow foreign nationals to vote, nor does any other country.
While many Cuesta students are undoubtedly very capable and driven, and may have overcome great obstacles, his criticism of many other students for being unprepared and unmotivated is valid. These concerns have been shared my many. I taught at a community college during the 1980’s, and had students who were just killing time. My sister teaches at a state university in another state, and has offered similar observations. The first step in fixing a problem is recognizing it, not “happy talk” offering empty and undeserved praise. There is an unfortunate tendency of some in the educational establishment to ignore or gloss over failure. We have seen attempts to conceal the failures of our schools by eliminating objective testing, undoubtedly because of the embarrassing results. For example, in Oregon they recently eliminated the requirement that students demonstrate proficiency in reading and writing, and basic math, in order to graduate high school.
John, I admire your ability to excuse pretty much anything, and to cast doubt upon any behavior you want to ignore or justify. I was at the meeting and relayed a first-hand account, and you decided to dismiss it since the other person “might not have been at their best.”
Sysak’s post was about a whole generation of students being without ability and motivation. Not a few, or even most. It said the whole generation. He decided to post it, all on his own. Wouldn’t a new trustee who doesn’t have that attitude be better for our community? Let’s get someone who will be better, even when not at their best.
Please look up gender dysphoria and learn more abou it. The DSM–5 articulates explicitly that “gender non-conformity is not in itself a mental disorder.” The presence of gender variance is not the pathology but dysphoria is from the distress caused by the body and mind not aligning and/or societal marginalization of gender-variant people.
To make it simple, the distress caused by people saying transgender = not well-adjusted, we will indulge you, and your identity is a mental disorder is the problem.
Again, I didn’t see the exchange, so I am unable to opine upon it one way or the other. While your description of the exchange may well be accurate, I just don’t blindly accept the characterizations of encounters observed by others.
Sysak’s characterization of a “whole generation” is probably hyperbole directed at the unmotivated amongst the student body.. I imagine that, if asked, he would allow that there are probably also some driven, capable kids in the group. But the problem he references is very real.
The change of the DSM to assert that gender dysphoria “is not in itself a mental disorder” is one of the politically-driven changes I was referring to. It WAS classified as a “mental disorder” up until just a few months ago, and the reference to the distress caused “by the body and mind not aligning….” sounds like the description of a symptom of a pathology, even if they deftly word the diagnosis to avoid offending people. If a condition causes distress, it is a pathology.
John, the DSM-5 manual was published in 2013, or about 108 months ago. It’s not a recent politically driven change.
Let’s elect a trustee (Adrienne) who doesn’t post hyperbolic memes directed at the students who the person is supposed to represent and protect. One who doesn’t think that transgendered people have a pathological mental disorder. It’s an easy choice!
Because the change to “gender dysphoria” from “gender disorder” in 2013 did not sound quite approving enough to satisfy the partisans, in 2022 the term “gender dysphoria” was changed to the even more politically correct “gender incongruence”. The current problem the profession has is how to classify it as a perfectly normal, desirable condition, yet continue to treat it as a actionable diagnosis that they can get paid for treating. Sort of a pocketbook vs. ideology dilemma.
I prefer electing a trustee who is willing to confront the problem of the failings of the students, even if it hurts their feelings. Ignoring a problem doesn’t do anything to correct the problem. The students will eventually be leaving the kind, supportive environment of the school, where teachers concern themselves with their feelings, and go out into the real world which is going to expect them to have certain skills, and which is indifferent to how they feel. They are adults, and will be living in an adult world. The school’s job is to make them competent, not to bolster their self-esteem with empty and unjustified praise.